WGN America is in the same position and since they probably aren't going to get involved from a national sense they need sports programming of a "local" variety.

The question is whether the new management at Tribune Co. sees sports programming as valuable and worth paying a big price for. The new CEO is a former head of FX and OWN (Oprah's network), so there's speculation in the industry that he want to remake WGN America into some kind of specialty channel with more original programming -- maybe all dramas, all talk shows, all reality shows, or whatever. Whether Chicago-centric sports broadcasts fit into that vision is an open question.

It's clear that what WGN America is doing now isn't working. It ranks 40th in the ratings among cable networks. TBS and FX are in the top 5.